Black Friday, Sept. 24, 1869, is historically a day of financial panic in the history of the United States. In 1869 a small group of American financial speculators, including Jay Gould and James Fisk, sought the support of federal officials of the Grant administration in a drive to corner the gold market. The attempt failed when government gold was released for sale. The drive culminated on a Friday, when thousands were ruined. This day is popularly called Black Friday. There was great indignation against the perpetrators. Several other days of financial panic have also been occasionally referred to as Black Friday.

Black Friday is also the day after Thanksgiving in the United States and historically one of the busiest retail shopping days of the year. It marks the official beginning to the Christmas shopping season. The "black" in the name comes from the standard accounting practice of using red ink to denote negative values (in this case, profits) and black ink to denote positive values. Black Friday is the day when retailers traditionally get back "in the black" after operating "in the red" for the previous months.

Evolving around the notion "Black Friday", this project looked at the economy of production, reception/mediation and organization, questioning the traditional structures of the presentation and marketing of art, and exploring possibilities of producing and distributing work economically and independently. Participants developed and tested their approaches to the art market and to questions of publishing and distribution.

Guest for the project was art critic Jan Verwoert (Germany).

The project resulted in a joint Black Friday publication, produced in collaboration with Revolver (October 2005). With an essay by Jan Verwoert and visual contributions by Ozlem Altin, Job van Bennekom, Bik Van der Pol, Martin Boyce/Donald Coupland, Deric Carner, Mariana Castillo Deball, Bill Drummond, Liam Gillick, Jelke de Gooijer, Kim de Groot, Birgit Knoechl, Korpys/Loeffler, Yu Kuramoto, Tobias Laukemper, Low Profile, Jonathan Monk, Paul Nulty, Hendrik Olesen, Renee Ridgway, Sonya Sprey, Will Stuart, Anton Vidokle, Kelly Warman, Klaus Weber, Carey Young/Massimo Sterpi, Katarina Zdjelar, and many others.

Christoph Keller (Germany) is a publisher and initiator of Revolver Archiv für aktuelle Kunst, based in Frankfurt.
Revolver is an independent publisher of artists’ books and audio projects, and also a co-producer and distributor for art books of partner institutions such as Nifca, Oslo; Kunstverein Munich; Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw; CAC Vilnius, Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana; and BAK Basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht.

In 1999 Keller also initiated "Kiosk – Modes of Multiplication", a travelling archive of independent publication projects on contemporary art, which is continually growing and changing. The presentation aims to provide an overview of the various models of multiplication and distribution of artistic ways of working, and to discuss the diverse strategies, motivations and programs of the participating publishing projects. In conjunction with the PZI project, Keller's "Kiosk" was presented at Witte de With, centre for contemporary art in Rotterdam (March 31-April 17, 2005).

Kiosk at the Revolver office, Frankfurt